How Did Cavemen Shave Their Beards, Anyway?

For Neo- and Paleolithic people, though, such sartorial statements weren’t a priority. Or at least, that’s what we usually assume – imagine a stereotypical “caveman”, and you’re probably picturing a grubby, wild-haired dude sporting fur underpants, a rudimentary arrow, and about three teeth.

But that image likely isn’t totally fair. “We do not have direct evidence of hairdos, skin, or clothing” from Paleolithic history, anthropologist Judith Berman pointed out in 1999, and while “we might surmise that the Neanderthals, living as they did in a severe glacial period, had little opportunity or motivation to groom their hair […] this is conjecture not specifically grounded in the data.”

In fact, there’s pretty good reasons to think the exact opposite was true. So what might a Stone Age haircare regimen have looked like?

Paleolithic people did care about their hair

The Stone Age was a surprisingly stylish time. Neanderthals roamed, decked out in flashy, proto-proto-glam-rock makeup and jewelry, while Ötzi the Iceman was rocking some serious body art well before his homeland reached the Bronze Age.

It’s not too much of a stretch to think our ancient ancestors styled their hair too, then – for many reasons, actually. Firstly, just about everyone has it: you don’t need to do anything to acquire it, after all – it just turns up, sprouting out of your head or face or wherever, totally uninvited. It’s also kind of dangerous to ignore, in a way that other aesthetic features just aren’t: after all, fail to keep up with the latest in sabertooth fur loincloth fashion, and you might leave the next Neanderthal-Homo sapiens singles’ night alone; fail to keep your hair tidy, and the sabertooth might end up wearing you.

“Hair removal for our cave dwelling ancestors was probably more about function than aesthetics,” wrote Kevin Cowley, Kristina Vanoosthuyze, Gillian McFeat, and Keith Ertel, researchers from the Gilette Innovation Centre in Reading, UK, and Procter & Gamble, in 2015. “Hair could provide an additional handle for an adversary to grab during battle, it collected dirt and food, and it provided a home to insects and parasites.”

At the very least, then, you’re going to want to keep things trim – and there’s evidence that our prehistoric forebears did exactly that. Cave paintings dating back 30,000 years or more show human figures with no visible beards, and similarly aged statues, such as the so-called “Venus” figurines, also include details that hint at some kind of hair styling – even if it’s not quite clear what exactly the sculptor had in mind.

“If we look specifically at head hair, we can see that it is styled,” Berman wrote. “The most famous Venus figurine, the Venus of Willendorf, seems to be wearing a hairnet or some kind of elaborate hairdo, and the Venus of Brassempouy has a clearly defined shoulder-length hairstyle.” 

“Other Venus figurines have dressed, or at least tamed, hair,” she added. And yes, it may even have been a fashion statement: “Archaeologists have argued that there are local ‘styles’ of Venus figurines; these local styles reflect both differences in local artistic traditions and may also reflect differences in local hairdos and other aspects of personal adornment.”

So, rather than the shaggy-haired, overgrown cavemen and women of our imagination, it seems our early ancestors were probably surprisingly dapper. But here’s the question: without metal for razors and scissors, how did they do it?

So how did they do it?

Ask a prehistorian how our ancient ancestors maintained their hair and beards, and you’ll likely get a swift response: “good question!”

“The exact origins of human shaving are unknown – when it began, how it was performed, and why remain subjects of speculation,” wrote Yonat Eshchar, a psychologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, in 2024. “Our ancestors at the time lacked the knowledge of metalworking, making it extremely difficult to produce sharp stone tools suitable for shaving.”

So, without steel, iron, or even bronze to keep their chins hair-free, what could the hirsute Stone Age citizen turn to? Well, there were actually more options than you might think: flint, for example, with its cryptocrystalline structure, can easily be knapped into extremely sharp edges – it’s apparently possible to get blades as sharp as a few molecules thick. 

Obsidian – a type of volcanic glass – was also available, and that makes such good blades that it’s sometimes still used by modern surgeons: “The biggest advantage with obsidian is that it is the sharpest edge there is, it causes very little trauma to tissue, it heals faster, and more importantly, it heals with less scarring,” Lee Green, professor and chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Alberta, told CNN in 2015. “It makes for the best cosmetic outcome.”

Other potential sources for non-metal “razors” included clam shells and sharks’ teeth – both of which are evidenced in cave paintings, per the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But as Kevin McCallister and Sweeney Todd can attest, all of these methods came with a major drawback – namely, what if you don’t want to, y’know, poke yourself in the face with a very sharp knife every day?

Well, as the saying goes: there’s more than one way to shave a cat. Some scholars speculate that ancient people may have used more painstaking methods to epilate their faces – with emphasis on the “pain”: “The Muslim jurist and philosopher Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi’i, born in the 8th century CE, described encounters with a nomadic mountain tribe that used to pluck their beard hairs one by one using a tool resembling tweezers,” Eshchar pointed out. “Ancient humans might have employed similar methods, bypassing the need for especially sharp razors.” 

“This wouldn’t have been a pleasant experience,” Eshchar wrote, correctly, “but it might have been the only way to achieve a smooth face at the time.”

The even more adventurous among our ancestors might have opted to trim their hair with fire – quite a high-tech method at the time, presumably, but now a time-worn gimmick at a high street barbers. 

A hairy issue

So, despite the lack of safety razors, our Paleolithic forebears’ grooming practices were perhaps more recognizable than we might have expected. But there’s a big old caveat to keep in mind for all of this: we don’t know any of it for sure.

“There are no extant images of Neanderthals produced by the Neanderthals themselves,” Berman pointed out, and “skeletal remains […] do not in any way indicate how an individual wore his or her hair, or dressed, or wore tattoos, nor do these data have anything to add about skin or hair color.”

Even the representations we do have, like those Venus figurines or cave murals, are enigmatic. “We have absolutely no way of judging what the creators of these images intended,” Berman cautioned; “for example, we cannot even say if these representations are naturalistic portrayals of contemporary humans, or if they were recorded because the subjects were typical or because they were exceptional.”

Still, it’s the best answer we’ve got with the information we have. And when it comes to ancient and prehistory, sometimes that’s all you can hope for.